Spread the Good News

Homily for the Feast of St. Andrew

About all we know for sure about Andrew is in today’s Gospel text and also in a reference to John 1:40-41. There, unlike today’s Gospel text from Matthew, it is Andrew who calls Simon Peter and tells him, “We have found the Messiah” (John 1:41). Celebrating feasts of the apostles, whether we know particulars of their lives or not, prompts us to think of how the Good News is to be spread in our lives and surroundings.

Both of today’s readings agree in promoting this point. In St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, St. Paul asks how people are to hear the Good News and follows up by saying that someone has to be sent to do it, to preach it. Given the indifference of many of our contemporaries in the Western and English-speaking world, direct confrontation of nonbelievers with an invitation to believe in Jesus and the Good News of Jesus is probably not the best approach. One suspects that many a man or a woman in what we call a mixed marriage knows firsthand the futility of nagging a spouse about belief. More impressive to the spouse and to any nonbelieving person in our surroundings will be the way we exemplify the practical love, the hope, and the joy of being a Christian. The practical love will be not only in simple, day-by-day helpfulness to our neighbors, but also in broader issues - for instance, in raising our voices about serious injustice toward immigrants and the poor; about policies that promote war, torture, and hardship for underdeveloped countries; or, in general, a lack of respect for human life. Our witness, no matter what form it takes, often will in turn generate witness in others and the chain goes on. That famous line, attributed to St. Francis (but which we know is not a direct quote), goes “preach the Gospel, if necessary use words.

Our sharing in the Eucharist at this table carries with it a share in the commitment of Christ himself to the poor and the marginalized, the outcasts and the neglected – no matter where.